Jonah and the Last Great Dragon (13 page)

When Jonah woke up, he found he was losing all sense of time. He ate when he was hungry, using the meal packs the SAS had provided or fish that Ffyrnig cooked for him. Every few hours the Great Dragon went hunting for food, to make sure he kept high levels of energy and stayed warm. While he flew off to search for seals or walruses with Valkea and Kaunis, the elderly female relative who was watching over little Lumi, Jonah played games with the baby dragon. He thought she was just like a cuddly toy. She had white fur so thick that you could hardly see her scales and her little wings, which were almost transparent, glowed pink or mauve or blue, as she fluttered about on the ice. She loved it when he threw bits of meat into the air for her to catch, or let her try to grab his harness to see if she could lift him a foot or two above the glacier. But all the time he was playing with Lumi, he was thinking about Erin and Kauhu and Iso, and wondering whether they had already reached London.

He thought a couple of days had gone by when Ffyrnig asked if he would like to go for a flight. ‘It might help to pass the time,’ he said.

Jonah clambered on to his shoulders and buckled himself into the webbing cage. Slipping and sliding on the glacier as he plunged forward, Ffyrnig found it hard to lift himself into the air but, at last, he built up enough speed to heave himself upwards. Once they were high above the islands, Jonah enjoyed feeling the sun on his face and gazed down, searching for polar bears or beluga whales. Sea birds
floated beneath them and he could see seals lying about on the ice floes.

When they had been in the air for about half an hour, he glimpsed a small flock of what looked like very large, dark birds circling around one of the smaller islands in the distance.

He patted Ffyrnig’s shoulder and pointed ahead. ‘What sort of birds are those?’

Ffyrnig peered, gave a rumble of alarm and swooped around to head back to Prince George Land.

‘Ffyrnig, what’s the matter?’

‘We must get back to the glacier and warn the icedrakes. Those weren’t birds. They are dragons, black dragons, and I think they may serve the Black Lord.’

Ffyrnig hurled himself through the sky, putting every bit of his energy into vast wing strokes. An icy wind froze Jonah’s nose and cheeks. He pulled his padded collar up round his chin, under his visor, and twisted round in his webbing cage to stare behind. The dragon horde were just tiny dots on the horizon now.

‘They don’t seem to have seen us,’ he yelled to Ffyrnig. ‘They aren’t coming after us or anything.’

‘Keep looking behind us,’ Ffyrnig bellowed. ‘If you see them again, the chances are that they will see us! If that happens, I shall have to lead them away from Prince George Land.’

As they flew over the island, Ffyrnig warned Jonah that he would land very fast. ‘I want to get down quick and get the frost dragons to warn all their brothers that there are black dragons about. We all need to get underground.’

Once above the icedrakes’ glacier, Ffyrnig hovered for a moment to select a good area to land on, and then plummeted down towards the ice. A high-pitched shriek tore out of Jonah’s throat, as the glacier seemed to rise to
meet them. The Great Dragon hit the ice with a thud. He couldn’t get a grip on the slippery surface and he lost his balance. With his four legs flailing, he skidded across the glacier on his belly. Jonah, clutching Ffyrnig’s wings, could hear himself screaming as they hurtled along. When the dragon finally stopped sliding, he groaned and stretched out full-length, with his jaw on the ice and his eyes closed.

‘Ffyrnig. Ffyrnig! Are you all right?’ Jonah’s hands were shaking as he tried to struggle out of the harness. He pulled his hands free and kicked his way out of the webbing cage, climbing down from Ffyrnig’s shoulder to run to the firedrake’s head.

‘I’ll be fine in a moment,’ Ffyrnig groaned. ‘I’ve had the breath knocked out of me, that’s all. Go and find Valkea or Kaunis. Tell them we saw the black drakes.’

However, the firedrake’s noisy descent had aroused the frost dragons and several of them ambled out of their ice-caves to gather round Ffyrnig and Jonah. The dragons were swinging their heads with their mouths open, and seemed highly amused as they looked down at the firedrake. They all agreed they had never seen a landing quite as clumsy as that. Kaunis lowered her head to peer at Ffyrnig’s feet and exclaimed in surprise.

‘Well, look at this,’ she said. ‘The Red Dragon’s feet are completely smooth. If we had feet like his, we could not land well on the ice, either. He does not have any fur on his soles at all.’

Ffyrnig wearily raised his head. ‘Never mind my feet. It’s you I am worried about. Jonah and I saw a horde of dragons. I think the Black Lord is searching for you. You should get to your caverns.’

The icedrakes grunted in alarm and began to lumber towards their cavern entrances, thanking Ffyrnig and Jonah
as they went. Ffyrnig pulled himself up and set off with Jonah to Kauhu’s cave.

The icedrakes had retreated into their caverns and the cave mouths were hidden by piles of ice. Jonah was huddled up near the entrance to Kauhu’s cave. Ffyrnig had dragged his huge bulk along the passage to the interior where there was more space, so that he could turn round.

‘If you get very cold,’ Ffyrnig said, ‘I will blow some warm breath over you. I mustn’t let the cave walls melt, though.’ Then he settled down to sleep.

The hours passed slowly. Jonah began to fidget. He thought he might scream with boredom. If only he could just shut his eyes and sleep like the dragons could. He kept thinking about Erin and the icedrakes, going over and over everything in his mind. Had they reached London yet? Would the icedrakes really be able to shatter the Night Creatures’ outer bodies with their freezing breath? And what if some of the demons had already spread to other towns? He began to feel as if he had a bomb inside him that might, at any moment, explode. He glanced at Ffyrnig and noticed that the Great Dragon’s eyes were open and his whole body was tense.

‘What is it?’ Jonah whispered.

‘There are dragons in the air. I can hear their cries.’ He raised his head to hear better. ‘And there is a deeper call. Rather like my own. It must be a Great Dragon, Jonah. It has to be Zhestokii.’

‘Oh, no! What are we going to do?’

‘You
are going to do nothing. Please, Jonah. The Black Lord is not going to see you. Not if I can help it.’

Ffyrnig suddenly drew in his breath with a hiss of alarm and swung his head round to look at Jonah. ‘Maybe the black dragons aren’t here to search for icedrakes. It could be you they are looking for.’

‘But why? I still don’t see what use I would be to him.’

‘You can control the will of dragons, Jonah. You make us want to befriend you. I think the Black Lord sees you as a very useful tool for building his army. No fighting, no fuss. Just a young lad who can be bullied into making dragons do whatever the Black Lord wants. Didn’t you say you thought you saw his Wolfmaster in London?’

Jonah swallowed. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, if you saw
him
, it’s a pretty high chance he saw
you
on my back. It would not have been hard for him to find out that we were coming here to ask the icedrakes to help us. Jonah, if this is what has happened, I will have to go and draw them off. I can’t risk them finding you. Even if the frost dragons return soon, we’re not much of a match for the Black Lord’s horde.’

‘You can’t go on your own, Ffyrnig! Ask the other icedrakes to help. You can’t fight an army!’

‘I shan’t need to. I will challenge Zhestokii to fight me, one against one. I have heard he is very arrogant, so he won’t want to lose face. He will be sure to accept the challenge. He won’t dare to use his horde to bring me down because, if he refused to fight me, his dragons would immediately see him as weaker than he pretends to be. Then they might dare to turn on him. He couldn’t take the risk; he will have to fight me. Anyway, I want to draw the Black Horde far from the icedrakes’ caverns. The smaller frost drakes are no match for Zhestokii’s forces.’

Ffyrnig turned to look straight at Jonah. ‘Please go and tell Valkea and the others that I’m going to fly away from Prince George Land, as fast as I can. Tell them to stay
hidden. Then hurry up and get on my back. I need to hide you somewhere that the Black Lord can’t find you, and after that I’ll go and seek him out.’

‘But why can’t I stay with the icedrakes? Kaunis and Valkea will make sure I’m all right.’

Ffyrnig swung his head round and lowered it, until it was level with Jonah’s. The dragon looked steadily into Jonah’s eyes. ‘Yes, they would try. But if anything happens to me and the Black Lord of Komi finds them, Kaunis and Valkea will have a terrible battle to protect the dragonets…’

‘And I’ll just get in the way and make everything more difficult for them,’ Jonah finished for him.

The expression in Ffyrnig’s eyes was kind and very grave. ‘Jonah, I wish I could tell you that the icedrakes will overcome Zhestokii and his slaves, and that he is no great threat.’ He looked down and let out a great smoky sigh that clouded the air. ‘But I cannot deceive you. My ice-brothers are terrified of the Black Lord. He is a wicked brute who hunts down his enemies remorselessly. If he and his black dragons find the icedrakes, I hold out little hope that they can fight him off.’

Ffyrnig looked sadly at Jonah. ‘It would be unfair to distract them from protecting their own little ones. They would always have to be watching to make sure you are safe. They can’t send you deep into the ice-cave with the dragonets because you would freeze. So you would be an easy target.’

Jonah swallowed hard. He had a lump in his throat. In a small voice he asked, ‘Are you bigger than Zhestokii? Oh, Ffyrnig, do you really have to go and find him?’

‘I must,’ said Ffyrnig. ‘I have no choice. He has to be stopped before he sniffs out the icedrakes and, worse still for dragonkind, finds you. But don’t you worry. I am as large as he is
and…’ He grinned wickedly. ‘Just as unpleasant as he is. Or so they say.’

‘I wish you didn’t have to fight him. I’m scared for you.’

‘Don’t be. The Black Lord is going to get a very nasty surprise,’ Ffyrnig said briskly. ‘Now, after you have told the others, I’m going to take you out to open sea and put you down on a good, big ice floe. You will be safe there for an hour or two, while I teach Zhestokii a lesson. It would be hard for his spies to find you there, as there are so many islands and hundreds of ice floes. And they won’t search the open sea, in any case, until they have covered all the islands. That would take many days.’

Ffyrnig looked closely at Jonah. ‘You don’t have to be frightened. It’s the icedrakes that they will seek first. And if they
are
looking for you, they will expect to find you among the icedrakes, so they will be searching the ice caverns on the bigger islands, where they know our friends like to nest. They aren’t likely to look at ice floes.’

Jonah nodded and tried to look calm but he could not help asking tentatively, ‘If you were hurt, Ffyrnig, just a bit, you know, so that you couldn’t use your wings for a while…’

‘You must
not
worry about that! Valkea and the other icedrakes will know where to look for you. In fact, I’ll ask them where to take you.’ Ffyrnig drew himself up proudly and swelled out his great red chest. ‘If anything should happen to me,
which it won’t
, Valkea will find you. And he will take you home.’

Jonah stood miserably watching Ffyrnig fly away, until the dragon’s huge bulk became just a speck in the sky.
What if he’s injured? What if the Black Dragon kills him? How would anyone find me?

He couldn’t remember ever having felt so lonely before, and was scared that Ffyrnig would never return for him. He wished that Lumi had been a little older. She had begged hard to go with Jonah and Ffyrnig. When Kaunis had told her that it was too dangerous, the little frost dragon had shrieked with fury and disappointment. She had only calmed down when Valkea told her where Ffyrnig was taking Jonah, and said that the Great Dragon would bring Jonah back to the glacier, as soon as the black dragons had gone.

Although he was warm inside his protective clothing, Jonah knew that unless he was in the small tunnel-tent the SAS had given him, it was important to move about to keep the blood flowing to his feet and hands. He pulled his scarf up over his nose, settled the fur-lined hood over his woollen cap and started gingerly walking across the bank of ice that formed a sort of mound or plateau at the centre of the ice floe. He knew he had to be careful. One false step on the slippery surface and he could easily crash down on the ice and break a bone. He decided to make his way down the slope to the flat area he could see, which was just above water level. Maybe there would be birds he could watch or, better still, seals. That would help to pass the time and keep his mind off the terrible things that could happen when
Ffyrnig confronted the Black Dragon.

Walking slowly and taking care with every step, he came to the edge of the ice plateau and looked about to find the safest way down. He could see for miles over the rippling blue water, which was dotted with other ice floes, most of them much smaller than the one he was on. At the edge of the floe, there were some tiny moving dots. Arctic terns, he guessed. Then he noticed some larger shapes in the water quite near the edge of the floe.
Seals! They had to be
.

He looked around for a way down to the sea. At one side of the shelf he was standing on, the ice and snow had formed into small lumpy outcrops and ridges. Cautiously, Jonah placed a foot on the ledge below and tested it. It was firm and unyielding. He stepped down and tried out the next foothold. It felt safe as well. Bit by wary bit, sometimes sitting and sliding on his backside, he made his way down to sea level and began to walk towards the place where the terns were flying about. He kept well away from the sea, knowing that if he walked too near and slipped, he could easily slide off the ice and into the freezing, killer waters of the Arctic Ocean. As he trudged nearer to the birds, he could hear them squawking and mewing at his approach, and one or two swooped about his head.

He did not want to disturb them too much, so he stopped walking and turned to look out to sea. In the icy waves lots of furry faces were bobbing about looking at him with interest. Some had almost black heads while others had fluffy silvery grey faces with just one or two black spots. Jonah guessed that these were harp seal pups, born in the spring. The babies were very appealing with their big, dark eyes and round heads. He was watching the seals diving gracefully through the waves when, at the edge of his vision, something stirred. There had been a
movement on a small ice floe some way across the water. Even with sunglasses on, Jonah had to screw up his eyes to stare at the brilliant whiteness of the little floe. He could not see anything on it, and yet there
had
been a movement. Then, as a wave curled forward in the channel between the two floes, he noticed something white break the surface. It was the head of a swimming animal. He had to turn away to rest his eyes from the sun’s glare. A seal, he thought, flopping off the ice into the sea. He turned back again to look for it. At first, all he could see were long, rippling lines of waves moving away from the other floe, and then he made out the animal’s head again and, as it broke from the water, swimming strongly, Jonah clearly saw the black muzzle and huge front paws of a polar bear. A bear that was swimming strongly straight towards the ice floe on which he stood.

For a moment Jonah stood perfectly still and just stared. His mind seemed to have frozen and he could not move. Then he began to think
frantically
.

Perhaps it hasn’t seen me yet. It’s probably coming after the seals. If I go round to the other side of the floe, it might not know I’m here
.

He began to hurry past the place where the terns had gathered, praying that the bear would not pay too much heed when the birds all flew into the air. He dared not run, in case the sudden movement drew the animal’s attention. He knew that if he tripped and hurt himself, he would be completely helpless if the bear came upon him. As he stumbled over the uneven ice, he kept looking wildly over his shoulder. The bear was still swimming but it was drawing quickly nearer the ice floe. It seemed to have immense strength. Jonah’s legs felt like cotton wool but he forced himself on. At last, he slid round the far end of the floe, pounding away from the water’s edge to reach the ice-bank.
He threw himself flat against the wall of packed snow, gasping and trying to control his wobbly legs and arms. His mouth was dry with apprehension.

Maybe it won’t come round to this side of the island. Please
,
please let it be going after a seal
.

For a few seconds, Jonah fought to get his breath back. Ought he to stay where he was or would it be safer to scramble back to the top of the plateau? He realised that he could not work out the best thing to do, until he knew what the bear was doing. Trembling with terror, he moved back towards the edge of the ice mound and very cautiously peered round. His heart felt as if it was sinking into his boots, when he saw that the bear was just clambering out of the water. It didn’t seem to have bothered with the seals. Jonah knew he was now in terrible danger.

Vigorously, the big yellowish-white bear shook the water-drops from its coat and then reared up on its hind legs to look around. It was a giant! Suddenly, it swivelled its head in Jonah’s direction. He drew back with a gasp, listening intently. After a few moments, when all his nerves were strained to catch the least little noise, he realised he could not hear the bear moving. He breathed again. It could not have seen him. With infinite care, he craned forward again and, in that instant, the bear also turned and stared straight into Jonah’s eyes.

The animal lunged forward and with horrifying speed began to race along the ice. Jonah screamed and began to haul himself up the ice-mound. His hands and feet slithered as he grabbed wildly for handholds and he pulled himself up with strength he had not known he possessed.

‘Ffyrnig!’ he shrieked. ‘Ffyrnig!’

The bear was at the foot of the plateau now and beginning to heave itself up. Desperately, Jonah cast about for an escape route. All he could think of was to slide down
the other side, but the bear would move much faster and would be on him in an instant. There was no way out.

‘Ffyrnig!’ he screamed again.

Then he heard a tinkling call. Something white was hurtling towards him through the sky. For a second Jonah thought it was a very large sea bird but then he saw it was a small icedrake. It was Lumi! Squealing with fury, the little dragon dived at the polar bear. Ducking away from her raking claws, it lost its footing and crashed down to sea level. Again and again, she darted at its head with open mouth, biting at its face. She whipped her tail round, dragging the barb across the bear’s eyes. It roared with anger and pounded towards the ocean. Jonah was shaking all over, feeling almost hysterical with relief, as he watched Lumi swooping over the bear.

Suddenly, she flew a little low. The bear reared up, lashing out with its massive forefeet. Its right paw reached for her wing and its wicked claws slashed into the soft membrane. Lumi screamed and with all her strength tried desperately to fly up and away from the bear’s reach. Beating the air wildly with her other wing, she struggled frantically to pull free. Jonah saw her wing rip free and then she fluttered away from the bear. Almost lazily, it reared up again, pawed at her damaged wing and dragged her out of the air, slamming the baby frost dragon on to the floe. It pounced on her, biting into her neck and growling, as it shook her violently from side to side. Jonah was ice-cold with shock as he stared at the horrific scene below him. He could hear a terrible wailing sound coming from somewhere. Then he became aware of a thunderous noise over the water and a speeding shape came flying out of the sun. It was Ffyrnig.

The wailing stopped and Jonah realised with shock that it had been coming from his own mouth.

‘Ffyrnig! Here! Over here!’ he yelled. The great dragon roared down upon the polar bear and scooped it into the air on his talons. As Ffyrnig hurtled over the ocean, the bear hung from his claws. It still had poor little Lumi in its mouth. Jonah, grief-stricken, knew that the small icedrake was dead. Ffyrnig turned towards the ice floe again and, flying more slowly now, shook the bear savagely until it dropped Lumi’s body on to the ice. Then Ffyrnig turned and sped away with the bear until they were out of sight.

Crying, Jonah began to slide down to water level. He ran across the ice, not caring any more about hurting himself. Lumi lay by the water’s edge, one of her beautiful wings ripped apart and her neck at a strange angle. Jonah threw himself down by her body and sobbed as he began to stroke her side. The lovely blues and rose pinks of her wings were fading and her soft skin was becoming cold. Jonah lay down beside her and put his arms round her neck, while tears poured down his face. Lumi’s scales felt sticky and he moved aside, rubbing his tears away. For a moment he could not understand what he was seeing. There were large patches of a bright red liquid dripping down on the little dragon’s body. In the instant that he realised what it was, he also became aware that Ffyrnig was circling in the air above them. And as he came gently downwards, Jonah could see the blood pouring out of a huge gash on the great dragon’s side.